Wednesday - late afternoon

Just got home land yes, I left at the normal time this morning. I wanted to get to the shop to get things fixed on the truck before heading over to the plant in Crossett. Turns out the lone mechanic we have left there doesn't know how to do much.  Grunt work, yes, diagnostics? NOT AT ALL. I have a ABS light on, the engine brake isn't working, the cruise control won't disconnect when hitting the brakes (it MUST do that, it stopped working as month ago), there is an air leak and the ac still has that lingering problem.  

He can fix NONE of those problems.  He wouldn't even try to fix the air leak, which was perplexing.  Why not? Because I can't fit under there.  ???  Whatever.  I've got all of those problems that have to go to a Peterbilt Rush truck center shop to fix now? That's untenable. HUGE waste of time.  

So I'm chatting with the office personnel while the "mechanic" does the only thing he is able to do, which is replace the quarter panel in front of the front row of drive axle tires.  It got destroyed by that tire blow out, he put a new one on and not with any great ease.  I dropped the crappy trailer and picked up another one.  I have no idea about this one excepting it does have an actual outlet on the rear of the trailer to offload.  The other one had center outlet with a pipe it can go into if you need to use it, not a good setup at all.  

Tomorrow should go easier than yesterday as far as offloading goes just for that fact and because I checked everything, it all looks good - but you never know.  

But yes, I'm tired already of the drive, drive, drive scenario. FAR more mileage on this Ennis runs than on my normal one and I wouldn't want to do this for any extended period of time.  It takes many more hours on each leg to get everything done.  And now I am sure that someone stole fuel out of the truck.  The exact same scenario today excepting the 99 miles from Lufkin - go up to the plant, load and come back.  The fuel needle is well above the 3/4's tank mark and would still be above it even with the extra miles from Lufkin.  

There was no shortage in the tanks this morning, thankfully but a thief that gets away with stealing hundreds of dollars worth of fuel once? Will probably try it again. I now have 2 sets of eyes watching out for the truck. People living there take some sort of ownership apparently, they are nosey and to some extent, I don't mind it. 

What I do know is that I have to get up at 4 am to leave by 4:30 am to get to the park and leave there in the loaded truck by 5 to get to Ennis by 8.  Whatever. The Interstate should be easier to navigate and I'll be done with the day earlier.  I don't want to get up that early, to throw that out there, but I don't make the schedule I just follow it. 

After that, yes, it's still slated for 3 full days off.  

Maybe if I have some energy left over I can do some mowing tomorrow. If not, hopefully Friday but there is rain possible, the forecast isn't that high that on the percentage scale.  

_____________

Ugh.  Got distracted, it's now getting close to bedtime.  Definitely going to bed in time for enough sleep to be able to get up early. 4:00 am.  Not looking forward to it. Trucker's life.  

Nite.  

 Tuesday -  mid-afternoon

Today went nothing like I hoped it would  First off, driving I-20 to Dallas is insanity.  People will mow you over to get past you.  I'm not going into all of that, it's too exasperating and just put it behind me.

But at the plant to deliver?  The first problem was the tank they wanted it delivered in.  There are 4 tanks, the one at one particular end is the one I hate doing. Yes, of course, I got stuck with that one.  The second problem was this giant U fitting.  It's supposed to attach to the outlet on the valve where the product comes out and then attach to a line going to the rear of the trailer.

You can't do side unload on that back tank, it's up a hill.  Well, that fitting doesn't.... fit.  I tried both ways and nothing.  There is no manhandling solid metal to try and push it into place. It's a stupid design to begin with and I've never seen anything like it.  It should have been made flexible to ensure you can get it on there.  I'm NOT taking this tanker "somewhere" to get  that fitting fixed, nonsense. 

So, I pulled out a hose and made a U turn with that. It worked.    Hoses were missing caps and plugs, the air pressure line wouldn't  go onto the  receiving fitting, once I figured a workaround for that, the air pressure never got up beyond 10 PSI;.   10 PSI!!!  It didn't matter, this product is more like milk than the other stuff I haul, 10 PSI was sufficient to get the product out pretty fast actually.  It didn't help that I was standing in 3 inches of water while doing all of this....

 But I eventually got it done, got everything stowed away and got the  Hercules out of there.